Bing better than Google

The success rate for Bing searches in the US is much better than Google, according to figures from Experian Hitwise. The internet analyst outfit has been adding up the numbers and dividing by its shoesize and worked out that while Google controls most of the search market, queries made through Microsoft's Bing search engine lead users to click on a Web page at a significantly higher rate than queries made through Google.

The success rate for Bing searches in the U.S. in July was 80.04 percent, compared to 67.56 per cent for Google, according to Experian Hitwise. The market watcher defines "success rate" as the percentage of search queries that result in a visit to a website. Searches made through sites owned by Yahoo, which farmed out search to Bing under a deal struck in 2009, were also more efficient than Google. Those searches yielded a success rate of 81.36 per cent.

Part of the problem that both search engines face is that people try to search by only using one word. More than 25.32 per cent, are made with just a single word, followed by two-word and three-word queries, with shares of 24.09 per cent and 19.49 per cent respectively.

Google's share of total U.S. search volume in July was 66.05 per cent, down 2 per cent from the previous month. Bing's share came in at 12.98 per cent, down 2 per cent from June. Yahoo search took a 15.07 per cent share, up 4 per cent, meaning that total "Bing-powered" search came in at 28.05 per cent.